Yahoo, Tattoos, and tOSU (1-year bowl ban, 82 scholly limit for 3 years)

[alexhortdog95]

Listen folks.

I'm another outside observer (being a Husker fan who's been a member for a very short while here) who thinks that this situation is very unfortunate for both the school, players, fans, and the coach involved.

But....with that being said....

What Coach Tressel and Coach Pearl did were BOTH THE SAME VIOLATION. It doesn't matter what anyone on this board, myself, fans around the country thinks (unfortunately).

The only one who matters here in this situation is the guilty party....and the NCAA.

And they feel he did the same thing as Pearl. I don't think that anybody can disagree with that.

The reasons why people are comparing Coach Tressel to Coach Pearl is because they both got busted for lying to the NCAA. It doesn't matter what the circumstances were/are. It doesn't matter that the schools imposed a hefty fine and suspension on both guys. Heck, it doesn't even really matter that they apologized for their actions.

What matters is....they lied. Plain and simple.

I'm not saying that the NCAA is any better. They let Pete Carroll AND Reggie Bush go scot free (basically)....and slapped down USC like Black Dynamite. But they make the rules.....and they have to be followed, no matter what happens.

We can say that Coach Tressel is a stand up guy. We can say he's got a 'squeaky clean image' as well. But none of us (unless you know the man at a more personal level) here can speak to the man's character, other than what we've all seen in public.

I could come up with the same argument for OUR head coach, Bo Pelini. Fiery individual, intensely competitive. Many know him for chewing out his starting QB on TV last year. But he helped a guy get a job rather than throwing him out on his duff.

Can I say that he's a stand up guy based off of that? No I can't. He could be the most arrogant individual out there.

All that is happening is HERO worship....there's nothing wrong with that, for the most part. But the problem with hero worship is that we put these guys up on a pedestal....and think that they can't topple off. Once they do, we continue to try to hold them up on that pedestal.

Don't do it.

I know you don't want to lose your head coach. Hell, I don't want you to lose your head coach, either. If the roles were reversed, I'm sure you'd feel the same way.

BUT

The fact that he's done good things IN THE PAST doesn't not excuse the behavior. Let's look at what the facts in this case are:

• He knew of players selling their individual merchandise.
• He knew of players hanging with a very shady individual.
• He had the power to notify someone, and chose not to...on MULTIPLE occasions.
• He lied to the leadership at the school.
• He sat by and let the players be suspended and knew he was just as guilty.

So, with all of that....as a member of the PUBLIC OPINION circle....I have to ask this question:

"Would he have ever come forward and admitted the truth had there been no FBI investigation?"

I know some are not keen on using the Pearl to Tressel comparison. How about the Elliot Spitzer vs Everyone Else comparison?

Here you have the Governor of New York. Former prosecutor. Hard on corruption. He was the moral compass of the state and city. What happened?

We all found out he was human.

Don't lower your standards, guys. Again, I'm sure he's a nice individual, but if this was Bo Pelini (or even Tom Osborne), I'd be asking for his head.


GO BIG RED!

 

[SmoovP]

I think outside the Big 10, and maybe even within, that Michigan still has a bigger "brand" than OSU.

"winningest program in history", the Big House, 11 NC's, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc.

I'm not saying it's right or fair, only that it is.

 

[BayBuck]

I have never ever said that any of the negative perceptions were based upon an abundance of knowledge of your program or your coach.

Smoov started his post by saying "I follow college football as closely as anyone I know," and then listed his own preconceptions about OSU football, so the responses he's getting are taking issue with his statements that seem the most out-of-whack coming from someone who follows "college football at large closely." Well, you know what? I follow CFB as closely as anyone I know, and somehow I know a heck of a lot more about other programs than their knowledgeable fans seem to know about ours.


Clearly much of the OSU sentiment outside Buckeye Nation has been negative for some time--we've been a decades-long CFB powerhouse, regularly in the news for reasons good and bad, hence the haterz gonna hate etc--and clearly this current brouhaha doesn't do wonders for OSU or Tressel's image. But the ongoing conjecture (from fans of other individual programs) about the national "perceptions" is getting pretty freaking tiresome.

 

[alexhortdog95]

I think outside the Big 10, and maybe even within, that Michigan still has a bigger "brand" than OSU.

"winningest program in history", the Big House, 11 NC's, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc.

I'm not saying it's right or fair, only that it is.

I agree to a point - only because Michigan has had allegedly their name out there longer - and they had a rivalry with Notre Dame way back in the day.

BUT - that being said - that same arrogance comes back to bite you in the rear. Same can be said for Alabama as well. People love to hate success.

I'm not hating on tOSU - I love their fan base and their team plays lights out football. I look at the morality of this issue.

I was a youth football coach for seven years, and it bothers me when I see coaches neglect their players in this fashion.

When I say neglect - it's the head coach's JOB to PROTECT their players. ALL of them, right down to the lowly walkon kicker.

He took that oath waaaaaaay before he came to tOSU.

 

[Steve19]

While Tressel has tarnished his reputation, let's remember that the Buckeyes were cited for NCAA violations under Coach Hayes as well. Although that might have tarnished his reputation, I suspect that he is recalled with considerable warmth by Buckeye fans.

This too shall pass.

 

[alexhortdog95]

Smoov started his post by saying "I follow college football as closely as anyone I know," and then listed his own preconceptions about OSU football, so the responses he's getting are taking issue with his statements that seem the most out-of-whack coming from someone who follows "college football at large closely." Well, you know what? I follow CFB as closely as anyone I know, and somehow I know a heck of a lot more about other programs than their knowledgeable fans seem to know about ours.


Clearly much of the OSU sentiment outside Buckeye Nation has been negative for some time--we've been a decades-long CFB powerhouse, regularly in the news for reasons good and bad, hence the haterz gonna hate etc--and clearly this current brouhaha doesn't do wonders for OSU or Tressel's image. But the ongoing conjecture (from fans of other individual programs) about the national "perceptions" is getting pretty freaking tiresome.

I can understand the frustration you're having - I don't mean to sound judgemental.

I'm just holding an individual coach up to the standard that he sets for himself AND his players. Again, I'd do the same thing to any coach here at Nebraska as well. Just because you are the head guy doesn't mean you can wash your hands of the situation. You are held MORE responsible than the players are.

I don't like seeing the players get the short end of the stick either. They're just as responsible for this situation as the coaches are.

 

[Gatorubet]

Clearly much of the OSU sentiment outside Buckeye Nation has been negative for some time--

I never had any negative thoughts about tOSU, and I knew of no gator fan that did. My friends did not dislike the program, much less think about it. The SEC vs tOSU thing started heating up in 2007. Before that I did not give y'all much thought at all, let alone negative. I liked you for getting us a shot at the 96 MNC. And I knew you were rivals with Michigan, and I watched the Clemson game with Woody at the time with my dad.

An analogy. I have known my neighbor for some years. Good husband, good dad, good community leader, gives of himself, moral guy. Then one day he has the worst day of his life. He is ROF'd at work. His car breaks down on the way home. He fixes it but rips his new suit the wife bought him the day before in the process. He rolls up and his kid has left something in the drive way he was asked not to leave a dozen times, and he runs over it and slashes a tire, which flattens.

He gets out of the car and starts cursing at his kid who left the thing in the drive way. I mean, it is not his kid so much, but the whole miserable day.

A person who is not from the neighborhood is jogging by. She sees a guy roar up in his car, smash his kids razor, and then get out and start telling the kid how dumb he was to leave his @&*(#^& Razor in the *%*^*% driveway, is he the !^&*&%%&^# stupidest kid alive????!!!!!

The jogger now has an opinion of the neighbor. It is a valid one based upon what she knows. She does not know the wealth of information about the guy over the years, and knows nothing about his character than what she has just seen. She does not know about all the people he has helped, or his own demonstrable moral fiber. What she knows is that he appears to be a person one should not like, and a person who has done something horrible, likely due to having poor character.

People who know the neighbor, when they hear the jogger talking about it, think that their neighbor must have had a bad day, and while he did something wrong, it is so out of character as to be almost immediately forgiven - or at least minimized as understandable if they knew all of the facts behind it.

Both perceptions are valid.

 

[BayBuck]

What Coach Tressel and Coach Pearl did were BOTH THE SAME VIOLATION.

Only in the most technical NCAA by-law sense. Pearl's violations involved recruiting and misleading the NCAA regarding his own rule-breaking, and keeping him around would have likely resulted in harsher NCAA penalties down the road--and any analogy between Tressel's situation and that one is just simplistic.

 

[SmoovP]

Smoov started his post by saying "I follow college football as closely as anyone I know," and then listed his own preconceptions about OSU football, so the responses he's getting are taking issue with his statements that seem the most out-of-whack coming from someone who follows "college football at large closely." Well, you know what? I follow CFB as closely as anyone I know, and somehow I know a heck of a lot more about other programs than their knowledgeable fans seem to know about ours.

If you can quote the kinds of statistical information (without looking it up) about programs outside the Big 10 as you responded with about OSU, I'd bet that's an exceedingly rare thing.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

While Tressel has tarnished his reputation, let's remember that the Buckeyes were cited for NCAA violations under Coach Hayes as well. Although that might have tarnished his reputation, I suspect that he is recalled with considerable warmth by Buckeye fans.

This too shall pass.

^-- this --^

 

[BB73]

The fact that he's done good things IN THE PAST doesn't not excuse the behavior. Let's look at what the facts in this case are:

• He knew of players selling their individual merchandise.
• He knew of players hanging with a very shady individual.
• He had the power to notify someone, and chose not to...on MULTIPLE occasions.
• He lied to the leadership at the school.
• He sat by and let the players be suspended and knew he was just as guilty.

I don't believe that those statements, as written, should be accepted as 'facts'.

For example, Point 1, rewritten to what I believe is a fact - "He received emails that indicated that items that had belonged to two players were in the possession of another individual."

I could do the same with the rest of them, but they're in bold, so I'm overwhelmed by the power and just can't fight against it any more.

 

[alexhortdog95]

Only in the most technical NCAA by-law sense. Pearl's violations involved recruiting and misleading the NCAA regarding his own rule-breaking, and keeping him around would have likely resulted in harsher NCAA penalties down the road--and any analogy between Tressel's situation and that one is just simplistic.

Only in the most techincal NCAA by-law sense?
His OWN rule-breaking?

Come on....

So, you're telling me, that if I'm going down a dirt road 100 mph, and I get pulled over, I should tell the police officer I shouldn't get a ticket (or get a lesser one) due to the fact that I'm on a DIRT road instead of a CITY one?

What do you think the officer would do in that case?

Again...the NCAA has rules. Each coach signs a contract that states (basically):

"I will follow the rules of the NCAA."

They both BROKE THE RULES. There's nothing technical about that, it's a stone cold fact....and it already cost one guy his job.

So...your'e saying that Coach Tressel lied on multiple occasions about rules being broken by players under HIS watch is technically not the same thing as breaking the rules?

 

[Steve19]

I can understand the frustration you're having - I don't mean to sound judgemental.

I'm just holding an individual coach up to the standard that he sets for himself AND his players. Again, I'd do the same thing to any coach here at Nebraska as well. Just because you are the head guy doesn't mean you can wash your hands of the situation. You are held MORE responsible than the players are.

I don't like seeing the players get the short end of the stick either. They're just as responsible for this situation as the coaches are.

OK. So, tell us about how loud you were squealing during the Tom Osborne years.

 

[alexhortdog95]

I could do the same with the rest of them, but they're in bold, so I'm overwhelmed by the power and just can't fight against it any more.

LOL - hilarious.

Listen all, I'm not trying to crucify the guy. Again, I hope he keeps his job.

I'm just saying that coaches should be held up to a higher standard than the players - and we as fans should support that.

I'll try not to bold anything again, LOL

 

[BayBuck]

If you can quote the kinds of statistical information (without looking it up) about programs outside the Big 10 as you responded with about OSU, I'd bet that's an exceedingly rare thing.

I looked up those exact stats even for OSU, because that's what a knowledgeable person does, check sources (full disclosure, I am a librarian). I could confidently state that say Arkansas is a good-but-not-great program thanks to a few standout coaches, but I certainly wouldn't put forth my general "perceptions" as somehow meaningful in a serious CFB conversation without visiting wikipedia or CFBdatawarehouse first to make sure I don't sound like a know-nothing.